UIW eyes Brooks as potential new location for medical school

Now that the University of the Incarnate Word has ended efforts to develop a new medical school for osteopathic medicine in downtown San Antonio, the institution will work to identify an alternate site for the campus.

Downtown’s loss could be the South Side’s gain.

UIW officials were pursuing a plan to develop a $50 million medical school and medical office building on a roughly four-acre site located on the Fox Tech High School campus. The university has abandoned that plan and will now consider two other sites for the school — the former Rackspace Hosting headquarters on Datapoint Drive and Brooks City Base.

“It has been a priority to try and be a part of downtown development,” says UIW Chancellor Dr. Denise Doyle. “But there were two intersecting considerations.”

UIW is working under a tight deadline. The university needs to submit a formal feasibility study for a new medical school to the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation (COCA) by June.

“They want to see where that school is going and what it is going to look like,” Doyle explains.

Then there is the matter of economics. UIW was attempting to raise $25 million to help cover the costs of constructing a new medical school downtown. That proved to be more challenging than some officials had initially hoped.

“We did not receive the kind of foundational gift that would have propelled us toward the Fox Tech site, the $15 million to $20 million that would have pushed us over the top,” Doyle explains. “The decision came down to finances. There are alternative sites which are more affordable.”

One of those alternative locations is the site of the former Brooks Air Force Base, now a mixed-use development situated near Interstate 37 and S.E. Military Drive.

“The primary advantage to us at Brooks City Base is that there is a lot of space available,” Doyle says. “We know we don’t want to build that medical school for today. We need to have expansion opportunities. Neither Datapoint nor Fox Tech offers us the breadth of possibilities that are available at Brooks.”

If UIW elects to develop a medical school at Brooks City Base, Doyle says the institution would likely begin with about 112,000 square feet of space situated in four existing buildings.

“We will make the decision no later than the end of this month or early May,” Doyle adds.